Will Self stood up for the current generation of young adults. Photograph: Karen Robinson

Being on the cusp of adulthood – well, in my early 20s – as I am, it's hard not to feel that the population born before 1985 is glaring down at me. They expect my CV to be written in text speak and my "other interests" listed as "belfies" – look it up – and Candy Crush Saga.

We are a much-discussed generation. People are obsessed with the idea that we've never had it so good, as a recent sold-out debate with that title at the Royal Geographical Society set out to ascertain.

There is no denying that a certain hostility is directed towards us, the children of the internet, raised to have an all-consuming appetite for endless irrelevant information. According to so many, we are self-obsessed and apathetic about "real work", praying at the altar of Tumblr and endlessly Googling our own names.

The problem is, depending on your sources, we're also the victims of an economy in steep decline, unemployed with no hope of the career we desperately want.

I'm not thrilled about choosing between the two, if I'm honest. Like every generation before mine, the question of whether or not we've got it better than our parents is constantly being wheeled out in the hope of making us feel either completely useless or supremely depressed.

Yes, we have better access to education, yes, more of us are going to university, yet despite that, no, I'll never be able to afford a house as nice as yours. It seems rather unfair that while we're being forced to admit that we really were incredibly lucky to be born in the 90s, we're also being reminded that the chance of a fulfilling and successful job is dwindling by the minute.

The problem with all this hyperbole is that it leaves some of us rather bewildered. Of course we don't fit into those two rigid cliches, we don't skip job interviews to hook up with strangers at the Genius bar, nor do we think making coffee on work experience is our only chance of getting a good job.

All this talk about never having had it so good alongside figures of one million unemployed young people in the UK is resulting in a nationwide crisis of confidence.

I spoke to a group of journalism students at a London university last week and almost all of them were struggling with a lack of confidence in their own voice.

In the face of everybody else's debate, we're being forced into ambivalence, uncertain of whether we're overachievers, underachievers or even achieving anything at all.

Thankfully, not everybody's desperate to slap a label on us. The debate panned out in our favour. Journalist Rachel Johnson and Tory MP Jesse Norman read out statistics from some bits of paper and plugged the relevant books, then Will Self stood up and quickly explained how the whole question was ridiculous and of course you can't compare generations because we barely know the people we spend our entire lives with, let alone the experiences of people 50 years ago.

The problem is, we can't always wheel out Will Self to defend us. Still, if you're reading, Will, there are some people I'd like you to meet.